Sometimes you are so involved in a project that you forget to step back and ask yourself, “Self, we both know this looks fly, but does what I just made make any sense?” and sometimes the answer is no. We have all been there.
Dan Hopper writes, “A friend of mine sent me the banner ad, which I’ve been staring at for the last ninety minutes alternately laughing at it and curling up in a hyper-confused, existential panic. Vote for my favorite video? Of Adam Carolla and Klondikes? Who? Cars? String?”
Here at HQ HQ we have a very likable fellow typically manning the building’s front desk in the mornings named Zack, and every Friday he greets every person with a sunny “Happy Friday!”
So consumers have often shown their love for brands in a variety of ways, some more endearing than others.
At one point in time, the pinnacle when it came to a consumer showcasing their love and dedication to a brand may have been the simple act of cutting the logo of the brand in one’s hair.
This took the top haircut spot recently, surpassing the faux-hawk.
Not only is it another form of advertising for the brand, but hey, this looks pretty killer and who wouldn’t want a haircut like that whether they liked the brand or not, right?
Of course there is always getting a brands tattoo on you (oh and if you need help with that, just see our earlier post on how you can find a good tattoo parlor via your iPhone), but come on, that’s still not showing a brand the love they deserve.
Well, thanks to the gang over at The Onion, we now know that at least one consumer showed his true love for a brand recently. They reported that earlier this week in a Circle K convenience store in Redmond, OR, Bryce Thompkins proclaimed his devotion and love for the Pepsi brand. Apparently only a small group of employees and close friends were there to see the ceremony.
Details from The Onion’s report:
‘”I love Pepsi,” Tompkins vowed as he offered the clerk two crisp dollar bills, symbolizing his willingness to sacrifice for Pepsi, and received 71 cents in return, symbolizing the portion of the two dollars that Pepsi does not cost. “Always will.” The solemn union of man and flavored soda was commemorated by a small bit of printed paper, which Tompkins declined.’
Now I ask you as you read this, can you say that you show the same dedication and support to the brands you use and respect? Our connections with the brands we use everyday are changing and Mr. Thompkin’s actions are a testament to that. I’m will to bet that as brand advocacy by consumers continues to evolve in 2010, we’ll see more of these types of reports.
So in short, take a cue from Mr. Tompkins and show the brands you love, some love.
So you may have remembered a post we shared in the blog here a year or so ago about how Old Spice was on a quest to reinvent their brand.
Hit unexpectedly hard when AXE launched onto the scene, Old Spice had to step up its coolness factor and remove the ‘your dad’s deodorant of yesteryear’ tag.
The brand’s choice: retain the character and identity, but flaunt it. Make it fun.
For a refresher course on what the brand did, check out the original post.
Fast forward to today; Old Spice unleashes upon the general public a series of pretty much the most hilarious commercials myself and from what I can gather, many others of have seen.
With the commercials, the brand has moved more aggressively (I’m being literal here) into the body wash category. This move is probably again thanks to AXE pushing hard in the segment and Old Spice wanting to build loyalty so men are using their whole product line.
So, the commercials retain the old-timey whistled jingle, but that doesn’t come until the end. Up front, they use chaos, comedy, confusion, old-school Batman style visual descriptions (think POW! & WHAM!), a well as Godzilla style demolition.
The manly man approach is clearly still there, they’ve just built on it to make it more over the top.
It’s truly awesome to see someone like Conan O’Brien, who wasn’t an internet user before in terms of interacting with his fans, more and more becoming a social media powerhouse.
If you’ve been following him on Twitter, you know how hilarious he is (come on, picking fights with Justin Bieber and proclaiming he is only going to follow 1 randomly selected person, the list goes on) and it has been hard to miss the legions of fans that have started groups like Team CoCo on Facebook.
Regardless of whether you like Conan and his comedy or not, he’s a brand with its own unique identity and boy are Conan and his staff embracing every bit of the web to their advantage during the year or so he can’t do tv after leaving NBC. They even appear to be empowering the fans that have started groups like team CoCo and are leveraging them for things like tour posters.
Truly great to see in such a short period of time, the way Conan is carving his niche, engaging with fans, giving them reason to follow him and reasons to buy his product when no one really knows what it will be like (RE: go see him on tour). His 30-city comedy tour, which I’d be kinda skeptical about just because he’s not done that before, sold out after merely a few tweets from CoCo.
All in all, a great story that is continuing to unfold and one that applies not only to famous celebs use of the web, but to brands in general. I for one encourage you to check him out on Twitter. You’ll get some good laughs and may pick up some pointers from CoCo.
Don’t let the name of this blog confuse you: you will find no shutter-shades here. Instead, the brand of hipster referred to are those who live in the sparse, wood-slatted homes featured in Dwell magazine, hilariously captioned with jokes ranging from the absurd to those which touch the very core of our human-ness. Like the sad lolcats. Or something.
1. “Sober (and in the light of day), she realized that buying the companion sculpture to the photograph had been unwise.”Link
2. “One day, after a particularly dull afternoon, she would yank hard enough on the vertical drawer to wrench it off the track, sending everything crashing to the floor—and tell her husband it was an accident. But not today.”Link
3. “Flipping the pages hurriedly, he sensed that the potted plants were advancing.”Link
Daniel Tosh is funny. I like his comedy, it’s good stuff. His show Tosh.0, which aggregates some of the greatest web video clips each week and presents them to the world via a crazy 30 minute show on Comedy Central, is pure gold.
“Web Redemption”, where people who’ve made fools of themselves on the web via video (that more than likely others posted for them) get to go on the show and re-do their video, hopefully in their favor. Crystal Light Dancers, Average Homeboy, football player who tackles his own teammate. Truly awesome.
Last night, Mr. Tosh closed his show thanking the kind folks at Apple for giving him an iPad to try out. He then proceeded to do this, which is again, awesome.
The best part about that clip, that you don’t see because it closed out the last few seconds of the show, is when Tosh says “We never even turned it on.”
While it may be a bummer that there are no Sam Jackson quotes from classic movies like Snakes on a Plane, Deep Blue Sea, or Lakeview Terrace on here, you do get 100% original Samuel L. Jackson quotes, apparently recorded just for the app by Sam himself.
That’s why you should get the Samuel L. Jackson app for your phone, iSamJackson.
The developers of the app have made it easy to get your Sam quotes in 2 ways, either clean and expletive-free for the under 17 crowd apparently, and then of course, well, with expletives. That’s a good move, because the world needs these quotes no matter what their age.
Samuel L. Jackson may be one of the finest actors of our time, with a resumé that goes beyond that of many other actors. I doubt George Clooney would’ve signed on to or even been able to carry Snakes on a Plane the way Sam did. Plain and simple, Samuel L. Jackson movies make you and your TV/DVD player feel good. Now they can make you and your iphone/ipod feel good.
So, you should probably buy it or Samuel L. Jackson might just call you leaving quotes from his movies on your voicemail everyday until you do.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and speak for the collective tv viewers across the land and say that we all know Conan O’Brien is:
1.) The man.
2.) Funnier than anyone else in late-night right now (and has been for a good long time).
3.) Deserving of his own TV station showing all Conan, all the time.
From Facebook groups, to Twitter posts, to the “I’m with COCO” shirt, support appears to be coming from everywhere. However you show that “You’re with COCO” is of course classy, so if all of us want to keep late-night tv funny I’d recommend showing COCO some well deserved love and support.
